ozymandias
by dance-at-bougival
Summary: she is a golden emperor worshipped by thousands, she is a carved image limned in gold, a false messiah of a false kingdom. but still she needs her right hand, she needs her wrath; she needs the most faithful man of them all to spill blood at her altar, to cut her enemies down at the knees if that is the only way they will kneel. qetsiyah/silas, the first immortals.


Before she had been an empire, before the gold spread of her kingdoms had risen to rival that of bone-white Sumer, she had been a queen. Before she had been a queen, she had been a courtesan. Before she had been a lauded courtesan of the king and his ministers, she had been a starving whore begging on the riverside.

She may have been thirteen once, and orphaned, and starving, but she had always had the gift within her. She had always had immortality breathing within her. She had never, ever, been nothing.

The world will come to find that, soon enough.

* * *

The night before her coronation, before her procession to the top of the temple through the roaring streets where she will be bathed, anointed with sacred oils, and then whipped so that her blood may stain the earth she is about to rule, he comes to her.

"You asked for me." Her general says.

She gazes into the convex surface of her bronze looking glass—a gift from a king who had scraped on his knees and had begged for mercy from her army, she remembers fondly—and sees him behind her, distorted by the mirror into a giant, though he is by no means small in stature. The looking glass blurs the sharp angles of his cheeks, the flat planes and unforgiving angles of his war-forged body beneath his woven tunic; she had not chosen him for softness.

On his wrists: gold from the Nubian mines. The battered sword hanging from his hip, a dozen knives hidden on his person. Only a smidgen of black lining his eyes marks his status. His eyes are dark, and watchful; constantly in motion, scouting the corners of her chambers, noting the way her fingers linger on her glass bottles of scent, lingering on the shadows where attackers may lurk. His hair curls close to his nape, and that is something she likes as well. It adds something almost boyish to the man that kings and princes fear, adds something almost sweet to the general that lesser men whisper of in hushed voices around campfires—"god's right hand, the queen's wrath." She likes this special kind of softness; it's the same contrast between the blood on her sword and the samite of her gowns, between the softness of her breasts and the golden plate of her ceremonial armour on top.

"I did." She says, and turns around. He makes a conscious effort to not straighten, to affect an air of carelessness, and she smiles. She steps closer, and watches his eyes tighten at the corners. He stands rigidly, too still. Her body clinks when she moves, the golden headdress perched on her dark mass of hair with its cascade of beaten gold and rare jewels announces her movement before her limbs think to move. "We have much to discuss."

His fingers twitch, and he moves back; begins to circle the room. "Oh?" He asks. "Your power has been consolidated. Kings bow and scrape beneath the glory of Qetsiyah the Queen—"

"_King_." She says, and her voice is sharp. "Qetsiyah, the _King_."

He inclines his head, and there is something almost mocking in his smile. "Qetsiyah the _King_. Deputies of Inanna cower at your feet. The Egyptians from the south send priests by the hundreds to beg you for your favour. Even the ministers and high priestesses from Uruk come to pay you homage. Your lands stretch from Nubia to the great River Indus. There is no end to your victories, what else can you ask of me, that I can deliver?"

In the span of ten years, she had gone from a whore on the outskirts of Uruk to the commander of her own commander; she had gone from a girl that even the run-down brothels on the edges of the city had rejected to the undeniable king of an empire to rival the city she had so despised. But her first and greatest victory had and will always be this mocking man, this soldier that she had made into a Goliath. The first gift she had given to him in a cave, flickering with firelight in the far mountains where the Egyptian kings bury their dead, and she had been terrified. She had hardened his bones and cemented the blood in his veins, she had infused him with the spirits of a thousand dead armies, she had made him War, on earth. And now she will take everything else.

"Your hand in marriage." She says calmly, and tilts her head when his eyes go wide, when his lips part. "When my prayer in the high temple is done, I want you to come to me, and I want you on your knees. And when the crowd is silent, I want you to request the honour of being my protector, in this life and the next."

His silence is a delicious thing; she can taste it on his tongue. Fear, and doubt, and uncertainty, and beneath it there is lust, for there is always lust when men look on their god-king. They have all questioned her right on the throne, they have all seen her as a body; to be possessed, to be consumed, to be given and taken at the whims of men. The trick, after all, is not to disprove their doubts. The trick is to use it.

"I have a wife." He says finally. "I have a child. You promised me that when I have repaid your debt I will go back to them—"

"And you will." She waves a hand. "I am a generous monarch, Silas. You may keep your pretty little wife and you may even keep your pretty little child. I will not tear you away from them. She will be your whore, and you will be my consort. It is a fit solution for all involved."

"I won't." He shakes his head, steps back. She fights the urge to sigh. "Why are you doing this? I've lead your armies for you, I've conquered entire kingdoms and slaughtered thousands in your name, please, all I ask—"

"The people will ask for an heir, for a consort." She cuts him off and turns away. "The people will demand that I be proven fertile, and they will demand that a worthy man be given access to my bed. The problem, dear friend, is that with your successes on the battlefield you have proven royal blood useless, and half of Uruk knows that I used to spread my legs for coin. And now I am a king that _their_ kings pay homage to, and you are the right hand of a living god."

His colour, beneath his even dark skin is fading. She can taste his fear and half-hearted anticipation like a coin on the tongue.

She steps near him, watches his own instincts betray him as he leans forward, and she brushes an errant dark curl off his forehead. Her voice is soft, and this is a wisdom that cannot be opposed. "Gods do not marry mortals, Silas. Gods take mortal lovers and gods have half-divine children, but gods join with their own. I am a god. You are a god. No one is worthy of me but you."

His pulse jumps beneath her hand; rabbit fast and just as fragile. She imagines she only has to say a word, to tear it out of him. "I will have your marriage erased from the records by the council. Your wife shall be given an annual subsidy from my vaults; she shall live handsomely, I promise you. Your child will be fostered in my palace, raised as the King's own nephew, tutored by the greatest minds and when he grows to be a man he shall have the pick of positions in my council. I am a woman of my word, and this I promise you." She smiles, sweet and disarming. The same smile as the one she had given her king before she pushed a dagger through his ribs. "I will even allow you to visit your wife once every fortnight. Come now, Silas. You cannot tell me that I am not generous."

Her hand is on his chest, nails sharp against the fabric of his tunic; her lips curl. She imagines that his wife had made it for him. She is close enough to feel his heart miss a beat.

"And if," he whispers, into the dark mass of her hair—from a distance, they might have been lovers. "I refuse?"

She stills. Her voice is very calm as her hand inches up his chest, grasps tight around the columns of his lean throat, and pulls his head down to her to whisper into his ear. "I imagine, boy, that at this very moment your wife is waiting for your return. She's busying around the hearth, and your boy is waiting for you after two long years of campaigning."

What a fool he is. She did not become the sole sovereign of the Kingdom of the Sun by asking nicely and smiling when refused. Both have its uses, but her smile hides knives; he should know this best of all. He is a fool, like all the rest. Her nails are biting into his flesh; she is about to break skin. Tomorrow there will be red marks for the entire world to see. "Now imagine that outside their homes are two guards, knives at the ready; they will kill your wife and they will slit your boy's throat in a _second_—"

He throws her off with a wordless snarl. She is almost flattered by how he doesn't doubt her word. She does not bluff; he knows that.

Her back hits the bronze walls, hard enough to break bone, and his hand is clenched tight around her throat. She laughs, and his hands will bruise, will turn her black and blue tomorrow; he will turn her sun-kissed skin into something mottled and ugly, and oh, _oh_, she _likes_ that more than she should, she's never thought of that—as much as it is an established fact that he is hers, she had never considered that she might be his as well.

"I should kill you," he hisses against her ear, and the hair on the back of her neck stand up. His thumb is pressing ever harder into her throat; this is the killing touch. She wonders how many men have met their end this way. She wonders how many men have ever tried to strangle their godhead. Her feet lift from the ground. "I should tear out your black heart and make you _eat_ it, you _wretched_ woman—"

Her magic hits him with all the force of thunder, a loud howl as the spirits are released from the void between worlds and just as quickly, they are gone, and he is lying on the ground, spluttering blood. There is a crack in her wall and his spine is broken. No matter. He will heal before dawn. She pushes back her hair and advance on him in sure, slow steps. "I haven't even told you the best part." She says lightly. "If I do not send the signal, then your wife and that pretty boy of yours will die at midnight."

They stare at each other in silence, he with dark, disbelieving eyes and she with her hands folded primly. She almost feels a twang of regret; he is her old friend and her first victory, after all. But if her empire is to flourish and if her enemies are to continue paying homage, then she must be unassailable. She will not have her kingdom undone by one man's sentiments.

"Every hour," she says calmly, bending so that they are face to face and she can count the drops of sweat beading at his hairline. "That you do not assent, my men will cut something off. A finger. A toe. An arm, maybe. You best hurry, before there's nothing left for you to save."

His eyes dart. His eyes are quick. His fingers twitch and she can read the thoughts in his head like they are inscribed before her by a palace slave; kill her, send the signal. Kill her, get down to his shack and kill the assassins before they can blink. Say yes, kill her after. Say yes, kill her tomorrow. Say yes, and then a thousand chances to kill her—

How many men, she wonders, have killed their gods and lived to tell the tale? How can he kill her, and be sure that his wife and child will survive to benefit from it? How can the commander of her armies, a man she had commanded as her right hand for more than ten years, forget that men worship her as a god, that mothers pray to her to keep their children safe, that children reach out to touch her skirts when she walks by?

How can he forget?

How can any man think that he can outlive his killing of a god? How does any man not know that a people, robbed of their martyr, will rip the murderer of their salvation apart?

Starting with his wife and child.

When he gives up, it is a physical thing. His shoulders slump and his fists clench. "Send the signal. I consent."

She lifts an eyebrow. Something else is coming.

When he speaks again, his voice is thick. "You have taken my whole life, my king. You've given me the strength of ten thousand men and you have given me wealth beyond counting. You have given a common soldier the world."

"I have been generous," she agrees, and rings the bell for the maid to come in.

"And in return you only ask for my soul." He says quietly. She stills. "So I shall ask one thing of you."

"I have given you gilded armies and gold beyond counting." She snaps. "I have given you fame, and glory and your name will live on in all the annals of history, and now that I am prepared to give you myself, you scorn me? How _dare_ you—"

"You have given these gifts to me because you wished for a soldier to do your bidding." He counters quietly. "I ask for one thing now, Qetsiyah, old friend. One more thing." His eyes are dark and bright. "This life I will live as your servant. This life I will do all that you require of me and more, but when this life is done, _I beg you_—give me the means to live life for myself."

This is how history is written. This is how Qetsiyah, King of Kings, the godhead of the Land of the Sun, rips apart the fabric of nature and rewrites the order of the world.


End file.
